A former warlord who for a time had been on the CIA payroll was sworn in Friday as mayor of Mogadishu and announced a plan to pacify this turbulent African capital within 3 months by requiring resident to turn in their guns.

Police raided the premises of leftist groups in cities across Germany on suspicion of a plot to attack next month's G-8 summit. More than 900 federal and local police officers in cities including Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen searched some 40 apartm

Turkish troops backed by helicopters have launched an operation against Kurdish separatist rebels, security sources said on Monday, after two soldiers and five rebels were killed over the weekend. They said thousands of soldiers

Fifty-three Family Intervention Projects around the country will provide intensive social care for around 1,500 families a year. Some of them will be removed from their communities and housed in intensive units for round-the-clock-supervision under t

A critic of Iraq's draft oil law with perhaps the biggest shadow -- one its original authors -- says the version penned by oil experts has been compromised by politics and he no longer wants it approved. "I think really the majority of the

Scottish nationalists committed to independence from Britain became the biggest party in the Scottish parliament on Friday in elections which left a political headache for Prime Minister Tony Blair's successor.

Some governments key to Iraq's future are balking at entering into an ambitious contract with the country that commits them to substantial aid in exchange for a promise of unity in Iraq with five years. The International Compact with Iraq,

Turkey's constitutional court today supported an effort to block a candidate for the country's presidency whose background is in political Islam, pitching the country into early national elections and a referendum on the role of religion in i

Iraq's prime minister has created an entity within his government that US and Iraqi military officials say is being used as a smokescreen to hide an extreme Shiite agenda that is worsening the country's sectarian divide.

In a serious rebuff to US diplomacy, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has refused to receive Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on the eve of a critical regional summit on the future of the war-ravaged country, Iraqi and other Arab officals said yeste

The Middle East is abuzz with talk of "Shiitization." Since the war in Lebanon last summer, newspapers, TV news channels and Web sites in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have reported that Sunnis, taken with Hezbollah's charismatic S

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he was suspending Russia's obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe(CFE) Treaty, the Reuters news agency reports. The Russian President linked the move to US plans for a missile defenc

The Turkish military has set a "specific timetable" for trans-border operations including intrusions into northern Iraq, Turkish NTV news website reported on Friday. The move coincided with the arrival in Ankara by senior advisor to US Sec

There was a motorcade of some sort coming South on 16th Street NW. As it approached the intersection, the light was red for the motorcade. But it didn't stop. The Cherokee, which had a green light, came into the path of the first of the oncoming

An insurgent coalition yesterday announced an "Islamic Cabinet" for Iraq as it attempted to provide an alternative to the country's US-backed adminstration. The Islamic State of Iraq group named the head of al-Qaeda as its "minist

The wife of an imprisoned Chinese dissident sued Yahoo Inc. under human-rights laws, saying the Internet company voluntarily revealed her husband's identity to the Chinese government and is responsible for his arrest and torture.

Virginia Tech mass killer Seung-Hui Cho reached out from his grave to lament that "this didn't have to happen" and warned that "I will no longer run" in a bizarre multimedia package received by NBC News Wednesday.

Taiwan is not eligible for membership in the WHO, nor is it even qualified to apply, a Chinese government spokesman said. The remarks came days after the self-ruled island applied for a full membership under the name Taiwan for the first time.

Zhang Huaixiang's thin wasted frame dangles from his wooden crutches, his bowed legs swelled by a disease contracted from a lifelong reliance on coal, unable to walk properly due to the rotting of his bones and joints from fluoride poisoning.